NEW ABP EFFORT TO TRACK ADS IN TRADE MAGAZINES: BIN SERVICE WILL RESEMBLE PIB FIGURES ON CONSUMER SIDE

The American Business Press in mid-February takes the wraps off its Business Information Network-billed as the most comprehensive ad page and ad revenue tracking service in the history of business-to-business publishing.

The service will report monthly results beginning with January trade magazines.

BIN should help put trade titles on a par with their consumer cousins, where Publishers Information Bureau tracks 212 titles.

CMR TO COMPILE DATA

Like its consumer counterpart, BIN data will be compiled by Competitive Media Reporting.

"The biggest advantage is that this will get business-to-business ad spending on the same screen as the other major media," said Jerry Neth, exec VP-publishing operations for Cahners Publishing Co., who served as chairman of the ABP's BIN committee.

BIN will report on more than 320 magazines and provide spending data by marketers and brands. Eventually, more than 750 titles are expected to report, said William Giacalone, VP-marketing at ABP.

"If the promise matches the premise, [BIN] will be a tremendous benefit," said Tyler Schaeffer, senior VP-associate media director at FCB/Leber Katz Partners, New York. "It will give a unified single information source set across a range of media,"

The idea to standardize industry reporting practices has still not solved the riddle on how to most accurately report ad revenue.

BIN settled on a formula that uses a one-time page rate multiplied by total page ads-similar to the methodology used by PIB. But some critics claim the results from PIB are twice as high as the real dollar figures in some categories because of the practice of negotiating prices off the rate card.

Contributing: Russell Shaw, who is a contributing writer for Advertising Age's Business Marketing.